Kafka's Last Love - Couverture rigide

Kathi Diamant brings to light the amazing woman who captured Kafka's heart and kept his literary flame alive. It was Dora Diamant, an independent spirit who persuaded Kafka to leave his parents and live with her in Berlin the year before he died. Although many credit (or blame) her for burning many of his papers, at his request, she also held on to many others - papers that the Gestapo confiscated. Dora's life after Kafka - from her days as a struggling agitprop actress in Berlin to her sojourn in Moscow in the 1930s, from her wartime escape to Great Britain, to her first emotional visit to the new nation of Israel - offers a prism through which we can view the cultural and political history of twentieth-century Europe.-Kafka's Last Love illuminates the life of a literary 'wife' who, like Vera Nabokov and Nora Joyce, was a remarkable woman in her own right.--'This sad story-beautifully told, offers an elegy for a lost world' Observer--'Casts new light on a great writer-Alive with vivid and contradictory humanity-Clear and gripping' Sunday Times --'A vivid portrait of an extraordinary and complex woman' Scotland on Sunday--'Vivid and coherent-A clear and absorbing book, which provides a fitting monument to a remarkable woman' Evening Standard --'Kathi Diament has told the story of a remarkable survivor, and a representative one' Independent

Kathi Diamant is the Director of the Kafka Project at San Diego State University. Though she has not unearthed a personal relation to Dora Diamant, for more than fifteen years she has been immersed in Diamant's story, retracing Dora's steps in Europe, discovering neglected archives and lost papers, and conducting interviews with those who knew her.